“Then I fear I must refer the matter to Constantinople. It will be a week or more before I receive a reply. Meanwhile I must, of course, impound the machine.”
“Perhaps that will not be necessary, Signor,” said Maurice, pleasantly. “As a boat it is not subject to duty, I presume. I am quite willing to pay the duty on a motor-car and on the petrol we carry.”
“That will be sufficient, Signor. But have you a passport?”
Maurice produced it, and the official handed it back after inspection.
“And this other?” he added, indicating George, who stood looking on with the air of suspicion common with persons who hear a conversation in a language they do not understand.
“He is my chauffeur; he doesn’t count, Signor,” replied Maurice, smiling as he thought how indignant George would be if he understood him.
This explanation satisfied the official, who accepted the English money offered him in payment of the duties, and allowed the travellers to pass. They made their way, wheeling the gyro-car, through the single dirty street of which Durazzo consists, avoiding the small hairy bullocks that lay here and there, and the swarms of red-capped children who buzzed about them, calling out: “Capitagno! O capitagno! Pará! pará!” Maurice beckoned one, and asked him in Italian to lead him to the little hotel recommended by the skipper of the Margherita, promising him a couple of paras for his trouble. Meanwhile the sailors were trundling the tins of petrol in the rear.
The hotel was kept by an Italian, who gave the English capitani—all well-dressed strangers are captains in Durazzo—a satisfactory breakfast.
Maurice entered into conversation with him, and learnt, with a certain misgiving, that there were several Austrians in the town. For some time past there had been an influx of Austrians into the seaboard districts of Albania. They had been diligent in making friends with the people, sympathising with them in the diminished prosperity of the ports due to the railway from Salonika, hinting that the day of independence would soon dawn for them, and that when they finally threw off the Turkish yoke they might get a slice of territory from Servia or Montenegro. These hints and suggestions fell on a ready soil. The Albanians were still sore from the stern suppression of their rising a few years before, and the disarmament which had been attempted by the Turks. They resented also the endeavours of the Turkish Government to enforce the use in their schools of Arabic characters instead of the Latin alphabet, which had been formally adopted in a national congress. Their discontent was being artfully fomented by Austrian agents, who had plenty of secret service money at their disposal. Something of this was already known to Maurice; but the hotel-keeper having, as a good Italian, a cordial dislike of the growth of Austrian influence, told his English guest a great deal that was not suspected by the British Foreign Office.
Maurice was making a careful mental note of all this for the benefit of his chief, when Antonio Fagazzi came in hurriedly: